Category: Steampunk Writing

Introducing Steampunk.com’s NaNoWriMo Forum

Today is Halloween, which is cool in its own right. In addition to its own haunted fun, Halloween is the last day before the start of NaNoWriMo, that annual frenzy of typing and caffeine.

For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, an international event in which people try to complete a first draft of a 50,000 novel in one month. Sounds crazy? Maybe it is, but if you force yourself to crank out those 1667 words per day, you’ll find yourself looking at something you can edit and improve rather than a blank page.

I know a lot of you out there are planning to write some steampunk for NaNoWriMo, so I decided to give you a place on steampunk.com to blow off some steam, discuss what your doing, seek commiseration, or even celebrate when you make it: the Steampunk.com NaNoWriMo Forum. W00t!

Please let us know who you are, what you are writing about, and how it is going. You might find friends, beta readers, or even just some sanity in the wee hours when those last few hundred words are eluding you.

Good luck, NaNoWriMonauts!

Stuff You Didn’t Know About Victorian Women

Forget the stereotype of demur, corset-wearing, tea-drinking Victorian women. Women in the 19th century played many roles beside the quiet child raisers of far too many films. Here’s a glimpse of how some women spent their steampunk era lives, as scientists, criminals, activists, and even soldiers.

• Last month, the Guardian had an interesting story about the women’s forgotten role in science history: The Royal Society’s Lost Women Scientists.
• More recently, they had another bit about women in history, this time about the all-female 40 Elephants gang: Girl Gang’s Grip on London Underworld Revealed. (Thanks to Paul Jessup.)

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19th Century Language Resources

Language is tricky business. Never mind the hundreds of languages and “official” dialects, every country, region, city, neighborhood, household, and person has their own little twists on language. Possibly even more than physical location, time period affects language. Look at the way rabid Mad Men fans/critics go over every turn of phrase!

All of this is important if you’re writing steampunk. It is all well and good to set your story in the 19th century, but if your characters inhabit that world they need to be able to talk the talk. A good way to learn the language is, of course, to read the literature of the time. Dickens, Cooper, Poe, and Twain can be quite instructive. But sometimes you need some more specific terms than you can’t find that way short of exhaustive searching. As with so many problems, it is the Internet to the rescue. Here are a few links to get you started:

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Steampunk Shakespeare Call for Stories

If you’re a steampunk writer, there is a new anthology coming that you have to know about. The idea was born in the roiling discussion of a Twitter Steampunk chat, and is being nurtured by Flying Pen Press into a reality. That reality is a steampunk Shakespeare anthology, with the working title of (deep breath) The Omnibus of Doctor Bill Shakes and the Magnificent Ionic Pentatetrameter: A Steampunk’s Shakespeare Anthology, and it is now accepting stories.

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